


extinguish

by shishiswordsman



Series: tales from the sea (oneshot collection) [2]
Category: One Piece
Genre: Gen, Near Death Experiences
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-22
Updated: 2020-08-22
Packaged: 2021-03-06 16:08:05
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,436
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26051641
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/shishiswordsman/pseuds/shishiswordsman
Summary: Out of all the dozens of hospitals they visit, only one offers an end to Law's suffering.
Relationships: Donquixote "Corazon" Rosinante & Trafalgar D. Water Law
Series: tales from the sea (oneshot collection) [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1598140
Comments: 9
Kudos: 104





	extinguish

**Author's Note:**

  * For [rocketspurs](https://archiveofourown.org/users/rocketspurs/gifts).



_Fire._

In the corners of Rocinante’s eye, he sees flames reflecting off pristinely white walls—off stainless, flawless window panes and floor tiles. It spreads like an infection, that fire; destructive, bright, unstoppable.

As he watches the hospital that turns away people in need of care, Rocinante lights a smoke off the fires consuming it. Cradled by one of his arms, Law sleeps, his head resting against the crook of his neck, half his face sunken in the feathers of Rocinante’s coat. Absently, Rocinante swipes his hand across Law’s face. His breathing gets shallower every day.

This is the third hospital they’ve visited in less than a week’s time, and young Law grows weaker. Much weaker. Rocinante takes another long drag from the smoke. The nicotine barely even makes a dent in the sour spirits ensnaring them.

They leave the hospital in silence. Ashes in their wake, the ruins of what should have been a cure.

It’s on their small boat hours later that Law wakes, bleary-eyed and too proud to admit he’s in pain. Rocinante is not an expert on Amber Lead, but he knows enough to see right through the kid’s façade. Dying from the white spots is an agonizingly slow process, something that makes you wish it were faster while your body melts from the inside out, as white marks you in and out.

Rocinante helps Law get a drink of water, and he pats him on the back, offers some gruff words of what could be a comfort when the kid throws the water right back up again.

He doesn’t have much time, and they both know it.

“Thanks,” Law says, wiping his mouth tiredly on the back of his hand. Everything he does he does tiredly, Rocinante’s come to note. Even when Law sleeps all day, he’s exhausted, enervated by nothing but existing, breathing.

“It’s nothing,” Rocinante mutters. He crooks a smile, lopsided, and runs a hand through Law’s hair. The kid’s brows knit together at that, and he mumbles something about how he’s not a child. Which, he is.

“We’ll go to a new hospital tomorrow. They’ll help you.”

The doubtful look Law gives him is a lance through Rocinante’s heart. He looks away, cigarette smell pushing into his nostrils as he inhales deeply, tries to calm down. He coughs to clear his throat, and looks back to Law with a smile.

“Trust me on this one, okay?”

After a moment, Law nods.

Like Rocinante had promised, the next hospital they go to _is_ different. The doctors and nurses inside recognise Law’s condition immediately, they don’t chase him and Rocinante away with pitchforks and fire like all the others. Instead, the wad of beris Rocinante shoves at them to inspire them to feel more altruistic is actually accepted this time. The doctors offer a cure and Rocinante takes it, grasps onto it with desperation because Law’s breathing stopped for half a minute last night, and those thirty seconds were the most terrifying of Rocinante’s entire life.

After all they’ve been through, seeing the doctors take Law in with open arms is a weight off Rocinante’s shoulders.

“Told you they’d help you,” he says to Law, who’s only barely hanging onto consciousness. “They’ll heal you up, kiddo. Hold on a little longer.”

Law’s eyes flick from Rocinante to the doctors, uncomfortable, suspicious. “I don’t want to go with them,” he mutters, voice no louder than a raspy whisper. “Can’t you come with me, Cora-san?”

He can’t, they’d told him. Hospital rules, regulations, something. It stings, knowing he won’t get to be there when Law’s cured, but the end result is what matters; if there’s a chance these people will actually help the kid, then Rocinante can damn well wait patiently for them to do it.

“Trust me.” Rocinante rests a hand on Law’s forehead. He’s burning up. “They said they have a cure, kiddo. They’ll help you, and then this will be over.”

Law nods. Rocinante helps him into a hospital bed and tucks him in. A tall man with slicked back hair wheels him away, promising Rocinante that his ward won’t be in pain for much longer.

And then, Rocinante waits. He paces in the lobby until he gets bored of waiting, anticipation a heavy thrum in the marrows of his bones. He wants to see Law walk out the examination room with his own two feet, a smile stretching his cheeks. He wants to see life in Law’s eyes again, more than he wants to complete his mission, more than he wants anything else in the world.

This might be over soon, he thinks to himself. If they really have a cure for Law, then the kid will be healthy at the end of this day, standing with his own two feet again. The mere thought is a shot of adrenaline in Rocinante’s veins, energizing, exhilarating. What would they do next?

They could go back to Doflamingo, in theory—they haven’t robbed him of the Ope Ope no mi, because they don’t have it. There’s a good chance Doflamingo would let them re-join his crew. Rocinante could carry out his mission, still, but letting Law anywhere near the Joker terrifies him. The concrete, physical dangers of being a part of Doflamingo’s crew are a risk, for sure, but more than that Rocinante fears his older brother’s influence. Doflamingo is surrounded by a dark, senseless rage and thirst for revenge against the world that refuses to bend to his whims. And Rocinante thinks about Law, about his small smiles and the blush on his cheeks when Rocinante kisses the top of his head.

He doesn’t want Law to become driven by rage like his brother had. He doesn’t want Law to lose the brightness inside him. At any cost, he must keep that part of Law alive.

His anxious legs carry Rocinante up and down vacated hallways, searching for the doctor. The operation surely cannot last this long; they’d promised that the cure was simple and painless. He finds no one for a long time, until voices carry from a room at the end of one hallway.

“—doctor, it’s not getting better. Perhaps we should increase the dose?”

Rocinante steps closer, brows creasing together with concern. Were they talking about Law? He’s about to step into the room, the question already teetering on his tongue, ready to fall out, when he’s stopped violently in his tracks by the doctor’s response.

“Yes, poor thing. Its heart refuses to cease beating, doesn’t it? Raise the dose by five milligrams, please.”

The world seems to sharpen around Rocinante, the air in his lungs suddenly morphing into icy spikes that pierce through him. Cold, clawing fear digs into him, making his every muscle bunch together as though preparing to run. Fight or flight. He steps into the room, and sees three things at once; each of them breaking his heart in slightly different ways.

First, Law. Prone on the same hospital bed Rocinante had helped him into, the child is sweating up a storm, his breathing laboured and too shallow. He’s unconscious, but still his face is drawn into a look of pain.

Second, the doctor. Standing above Law like a reaper might loom over a cradle. Waiting for Rocinante’s ward to die.

Third, a syringe full of dark, brackish liquid, held by a nurse who’s got an expression of mock compassion on her face. They think they’re helping Law. They think they’ll cure him by culling him from this existence, and Rocinante almost let that happen.

The ice in his lungs turns to fire. Scorching, burning, furious. Fuelling.

He doesn’t realise he’s moved before he’s already done it, wrenching the syringe from the nurse’s hand, right as she’s about to inject its contents into the IV port.

“What are you doing?” Rocinante roars. “You promised to _help_ him, you said you’d make him better! You tried to kill him! What have you done!?”

The doctor startles, and the nurse scrambles onto her feet, terrified. Good.

The doctor’s mouth opens and closes, like a fish out of water. “It’s a mercy, Sir; this is all we can do for it. Its suffering can be ended human—”

Rocinante reaches out an arm without looking, slamming the pathetic excuse of a doctor through the doors of the glass cabinets that line the walls. Shaking with rage, he grits his teeth, the cigarette he’d had in his mouth snapping clean in half. The taste of tobacco leaves fills Rocinante’s mouth, but he hardly even notices.

“Say that again.”

The doctor gasps for breath. Red stains his white coat, now. “What, I—Let me go, please!”

“Say. That. Again.”

The doctor swallows loudly. “It is suffering, Sir. We can make it comfortable.”

_It._

Law’s a brilliant, persistent, strong kid. He’s been through so much, and he’s still standing. He’s not an it. Rancour fills Rocinantes every cell, every atom, and he grinds his teeth.

“He’s sick. Not a goddamn animal.” Rocinante clenches his eyes shut. Anger twists at his soul, building and boiling over. His hands shake as he lets go of the doctor, clenching into tight fists at his sides. “Listen close. No one is above others on this shithole of a planet. No one.”

Those words are the last ones the doctor ever hears. Rocinante makes sure of it.

_I’ll trust you,_ Law had said, his voice frail as his body. _I’ll trust you,_ he’d said, and he’d been honest. That hurts the most; the fact that Law’d really thrust his life into Rocinante’s hands, and what had he done with it? He’d handed him over to the wolves. Rocinante’s stride quickens, his heartbeat thunderous in his ears. Law’s so still. Only the steady beeping of the heart rate monitor attached to him keeps Rocinante sane, because it’s evidence that his ward still breathes.

“Law.” He shakes Law; gently, like he’s made of glass. “Kid! Wake up, boy!”

Law doesn’t stir even as Rocinante gathers him in his arms. His eyes are stinging, makeup running down his cheeks with bitter tears. They’ve lost. This was what he put the last of their hope into, and they’ve gambled it all away. And it’s all because of these deceitful bastards, these—

“Fuckers!” Rocinante growls. He kicks the doctor one more time, hard enough he feels bones crack under his heel.

Law’s still limp, his breathing weak against the side of Rocinante’s neck.

As he storms out, he tears down IV stands and oxygen tanks, knocks over patients and employees alike. The trail of destruction follows him to the front doors, and Rocinante lingers there, hears the screams and the panic of the staff inside. There’s a line of gasoline on the floor Rocinante doesn’t remember creating, leading to the bowels of the hospital.

A bunch of healers they are, trying to kill a defenceless child. A part of Rocinante wonders absently if the people trapped inside feel half as scared as Law had, when he’d realised the people who promised to help him planned to take his life instead. Do the healers inside feel helpless now, too?

He hopes so.

When Rocinante steps over the threshold back into the cold and bitter winter, he drops his cigarette into the line of gasoline. And he doesn’t look back.

Snow crunches under his feet, step by step by step. Somewhere closer to the shoreline, a seagull caws its nightly cries. Law’s breathing is too raspy, too fast, and Cora thinks about that doctor’s words.

He refused to die. His boy was being pumped full of poison, even when he’s already so full of it his skin has turned gaunt and ashen, his heart barely beating. And still, it refused to cease. Pride swells behind Rocinante’s nose, puts pressure on his sinuses, and he has to blink rapidly to keep tears at bay.

His kid fought, and is still fighting.

Their boat is still docked right where they’d left it; as if nothing had happened. Rocinante tumbles into the dinghy, undoes the knot tying them to the harbour with numb fingers, and then he simply sits there. Staring into the horizon.

He could have lost Law today. Hell, he still might; he hasn’t a clue what the doctors did to him to rid him of his misery. Law could have been injected with poison, and Rocinante would be none the wiser. The thought chills him to the bone, and Rocinante digs into his pockets shakily, procuring a cigarette. Its warmth is a poor comfort, but it’s something.

Law wakes hours later, and Rocinante cradles him in his arms as he whimpers tiredly, falling back into a fitful sleep. It hurts him that Law’s too weak to protest being held like a child, and the sting of how badly he’s betrayed his ward is a dull one, a slowly corroding acid in his marrows.

“Cora-san?” Law slurs, when the sun is almost rising again. There’s a flush to his cheeks, but at this point Corazon welcomes any sign of colour in place of none. “You got me out. They were… They weren’t good. Those doctors.”

Speaking past the lump in his throat is hard, but Rocinante manages, somehow. “I know, Law. They’re dead, now.”

“Good.” Law nods, his expression grim—too grim for his young face. “What now?”

That’s a good question, Rocinante knows. If they don’t find someone who can actually help soon, he might as well just accept reality and start making Law as comfortable as possible before—Rocinante clears his throat, blinks hard to keep tears at bay. Because there’s no other hope any longer; no more olive branches to plead for. Rocinante looks at Law, and sets his jaw. No matter what, he _must_ make sure Law becomes truly free. No matter what it takes.

“I don’t know,” he admits truthfully, gives Law a frail smile. “But I know this, Law: I’m going to set you free. Not in the way those bastards at the hospital wanted to, but really, truly free. Free of illness and ill will.”

Law looks away, to his fidgeting hands. His lip wobbles suspiciously. “Cora-san, I—”

“I promise you, Law,” Rocinante interrupts. “I’ll help you, brat. Can you still trust me?”

Law’s brows furrow, puzzled. He nods. “Yeah. I trust you, Cora-san.”

Rocinante blows smoke out of his lungs, the wisps of it curling around them like a veil that shields them from the rest of the world. He tries to smile, but somehow he knows Law sees right through it. 

“Thanks, kid. I won’t let you down.”

He won’t. No matter what.

**Author's Note:**

> this work is for katie, the sweetest person i know and also the biggest cora-clown to ever exist. you deserve the world my friend ;;-;;


End file.
